Saturday, October 12, 2013

Let’s do some simple math to start. Don’t be scared, I promise it is simple! You have a structured class once a week, which leaves how many days a week without a class? Six! Very good! Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way for you to make progress in those six days in between classes? Yeah, that would be quite awesome. Luckily, there are some things we have discovered through practice that will help you to get the most use out of each of your lessons.

Find a Training Partner!
Two minds (or even three!) are better than one. Ideally, this training partner excels at different things than you do. They don’t have to be MORE skilled than you, often it will actually be to your benefit to be of similar skill level. That way you explain things in terms you both can understand.

Pay Attention
Watch the instructor, but also watch your classmates who can do the skill. See what works. Make note of the little things. Pay attention to their hand position, foot position, where they are looking and what the rest of the body is doing. If you are doing a skill one at a time, each person’s turn is an opportunity to learn something important about the movement. You are looking for movements that are smooth and effortless. Those are the ones you want to model. If you can, come up with tag points you think might be helpful later DURING your lesson or practice session.

Read more about how to create great tag points that will accelerate your learning.

YouTube! Use It
Class can teach you the basic skills and what you need to focus on outside of class. YouTube can help you refine them and come up with tag points to make them better. If you find yourself really struggling to figure out a movement, watch several different people perform that movement on video. Pay particular attention to the components that are similar between different people and where there seems to be some “play” in the performance. Things that are often key elements are often: foot placements, foot order, hand placements, and core body position.

Keep it Simple
Focus on one section of a skill at a time. This is where TAGteach is a HUGE help. Decide on a skill that you want to focus on and then break it into small components. You might have to hunt for specific obstacles that let you practice one component. Height is often the easiest and most useful element to remove. For example: when practicing vaults, find a place where the railing only has a drop on one side and gradually increase the drop on the other side.

Video!
Take video of your training sessions and use it DURING that session. Watch what seems to work and what doesn’t. The more you watch people move, the easier it will be for you to figure out how a particular muscle group contributes to a movement and how these movements will fit together into a fluidly performed skill. Don’t be afraid to experiment as the video will tell you if something is working well before you will see it on a larger scale. Find something you are struggling with, come up with a tag point you think might help, practice it a few times, and then check the video to see if you see ANY signs of improvement. If you do, great! If not, the new way you moved in this video will likely give you an idea for a new tag point. Use that.

Ask Questions
If you don’t know something, ask! If you are struggling with a specific skill, ask. Ask your coach for one thing that you could do to make the skill better. Just one. Make this into a focus point during the session, only focus on this one aspect of the skill (for example, legs straight in lazy vault). If your coach struggles with giving you just one thing, try to pick out what you think is the key point and ask specifically if that is a good thing to focus on. When you are on own, use this focus point to guide your practice! Even better, have someone tag you. They don’t even have to know the skill. You should be able to explain it clearly enough that they can tag you with no outside knowledge.

Get Stronger
Know when something is a strength issue and when it is a technique issue. Practicing climb-ups 8 million times does you no good if you just aren’t strong enough to do good climb ups. It simply starts building movements into your muscle memory that will be difficult to fade later. Conditioning to increase your strength is as important (if not more so for some movements) than just training techniques and movements.

Watch this video of a practice Parkour training session using TAGteach to focus and improve skills and reduce fear:

Learn More About the Extraordinary Power of TAGteachNow available is a recorded webinarpresented by Karin Coyne and Abigail Curtis along with TAGteach co-founders Joan Orr and Theresa McKeon on the topic of TAGteach for sport coaching. Sport coaching is where TAGteach got its start and where it truly excels. If you are a coach or an athlete this is must have information and a low cost way to learn about TAGteach.

Because we want to get this information into the hands of more coaches, we will give you a discount code for you to give to your coach or your child's coach to access the recorded webinar for free. Coaches need to know this stuff! You will get an email with the free discount code after you register for the recorded webinar.

Monday, October 7, 2013

These videos and comments were recorded during the Primary Certification Seminar which we have held at the TICE Center in Piacenza. Among all the wonderful things presented, I would like to share these two videos. Thank you to the participants!
Luca

Video #1: Teaching Sign Language to a Learner that is Deaf, Mute and Visually Impaired
TAGteach stands for “Teaching with Acoustical Guidance”. Actually, what is unusual about the methodology shown in this video is the type of a marker (tag) used to reinforce students’ correct answers. In this video, (presented for the Primary Certification) by Gabriella (the teacher) and Eleanor (the student) the marker is no longer acoustical, but tactile. The tag phrasing is not verbal but tactile and is modeled by the teacher with her hands. As long as the marker is always consistent and can be easily perceived by the student any stimulus is suitable. In the project, the 'student' is a deaf-mute person and visually impaired.

I can only add that it was one of the most exciting experiences that I have had since working with TAGteach. See below for an explanation of what is going on in the video.

COMMENTS ON THE VIDEO:
0.00: The teacher " draws" on students shoulder the letter R. Many people with similar disabilities like those presented in this project, learn to recognize the letters in this way. In the project we want to teach the correct sign for the letter R. The first phase of the video shows how, usually, these behaviors are thought.

0.30: Student does not perform the action properly. The teacher checks her program
and get ready for a new strategy , introducing the TAGteach.

0.32: The instructions are presented by the teacher with the right hand . The student " feels " the movements with her left hand and replicate it with her right hand.

0.35: The TAG is a touch on the right leg.

0.43: The teacher lowers student’s right hand of the . In this way they get ready for the next step of the practice.

1:10: after checking the skills of the student , the teacher moves back to ask the complete gesture for the letter R. The teacher holds student’sright hand, to indicate the exact number of rotations of the wrist required for the letter R. Lacking the ability to communicate visually or verbally ithe touch is the only means of communication.

1:15: The teacher explains why he has decided to take action by blocking the wrist

1.30 : The student repeats the gesture correctly.Tag !

ELEONORA'S COMMENT:

"as far as my experience I can say that it was interesting to play the role of someone with these problems. I'm always the other side, teaching someone, and, with this experience, I truly realized what it means to want to succeed in something and have a thousand of obstacles. Then, blindfolded and silence all around, so many thoughts went through my head, and the most common was "Am I wrong?" I think, however, that it is the recurring thought of anyone who is actually learning. Having a good teacher as Gabriella, and an immediate signal that I could use to have clear evidence of my success, was a big help. I think that the TAGteach methodology that you have shown us to could have some interesting applications, used properly and setting realistic goals."

Video #2: Teaching an Expectant Mother How to Breast Feed

Get an expectant mother, a doctor and a therapist, add a puppet and what comes out is this wonderful lesson to teach to breastfeed. Thanks to Sara & Sara (the two teachers) and Serena, future mom!

If Eleonora and Gabriella's video was exciting, this one was fun, professional and instructive. Personally I wish we'd had someone to tell us how to breastfeed during the first week of my son's life when he wanted to suck as he thought it had to be done....many sleepless nights

TAGteach International is proud to announce that it has been selected as a finalist in the SuperNova Awards, sponsored by Constellation Research. The finalists were selected from a pool of over 220 applicants, and recognized by the SuperNova Award Judges as exceptional examples of those who embody the SuperNova Award spirit to innovate and overcome the odds in successfully applying emerging and disruptive technologies within their organizations. The winners of the SuperNova Awards will be announced at the SuperNova Awards gala dinner on October 30, 2013 in Half Moon Bay, California. Applicants were subjected to a vigorous set of criteria that reflect real-world and pragmatic experience.

"We've been very impressed with the quality of this year's SuperNova Awards finalists. The individual and companies who have been selected truly buck the trend and show disruption," said R "Ray" Wang, principal analyst and CEO of Constellation Research, Inc.

TAGteach International is a finalist in the category, The Future of Work, for using the new social team software, Gabitat in publishing and marketing its book: Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living with Autism. Gabitat allowed the team scattered across North America in three time zones to work together efficiently, share documents using Box, track tasks using Asana, share and edit Google docs, and communicate using a central discussion area, all from within a single user interface.

"Overall, I don't see how we could have done this project and taken a manuscript from draft from to published book in the time we did without Gabitat. There were no problems with losing documents or data; there were no system crashes. It was reliable, convenient and easy to use", said author Martha Gabler.

Public voting continues until Oct 9, 2013 and will contribute 30% toward the final decision, with judging by a panel contributing 70%.

About TAGteachTAGteach is a company dedicated to promoting positive strategies for increased productivity and success in every facet of life. TAGteach offers public seminars and private consulting to teach people in all fields of endeavor how to reduce instructions into manageable pieces, present these to the learner in an effective way and provide immediate positive reinforcement.

About GabitatGabitat is social team software that gives users a single interface from which to share and discuss content from many different cloud applications.

About Constellation ResearchConstellation Research, Inc. is a research and advisory firm focused on helping organizations apply emerging technologies to disrupt business models.

Abstract

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of using a modified TAGteach™ procedure and correction to decrease toe-walking in a 4-year-old boy with autism. Two conditions were analyzed: correction alone and correction with an audible conditioned reinforcing stimulus. Correction alone produced minimal and inconsistent decreases in toe-walking but correction with an audible conditioned stimulus proved most effective in reducing this behavior. This has implications for decreasing toe-walking in other children with autism and may be easily used by teachers and parents.